Offlane Omniknight Guide

We typically associate carry heroes with winning. After all, it’s the carries that end up deciding who wins the game once they secure their levels and farm. But statistically speaking, the hero with the best chances of winning in ranked Dota 2 is not a carry at all. The hero we’re talking about is of course Omniknight, arguably the most iconic support in the game.

Omniknight has held the #1 win rate spot for years, usually hovering just above 60% win ratio. And there’s a very good reason – all 4 of his spells are incredibly powerful and difficult to deal with, especially during team fights.

The fact of the matter is, if you’re looking to raise your MMR then Omniknight is one of, if not the best hero. While Omni is usually played as a safe lane support, he is currently much more popular as an offlaner.

Skills

Purification is one of the best healing abilities in the game, because it not only heals one target for a large amount, but also works really well as a damage nuke. And given the fact that it is pure damage, it’s not reduced by any resistances or immunities, which makes it even more potent. The tricky thing with this spell is timing it properly, so that you both heal yourself/an ally and damage an enemy at the same time.

Omniknight using his heal to keep himself alive and damage enemy heroes at the same time.

Repel

Creates a divine barrier around a target unit which grants them Spell Immunity and 100% resistance to Magic Damage for 6-12 sec. 14 sec cooldown.

Repel is without a doubt the most powerful Omniknight spell, and is the major reason why he is such a strong hero. This spell essentially gives a free BKB for 6-12 seconds, and can easily turn the fight around by allowing your carry to go unhindered, or save someone from death.

Degen Aura

Reduces movement speed of enemies by 10-34% and attack speed by 10-34 within 350 radius of Omniknight.

This aura is incredibly useful at all stages of the game, and gives you an additional team fight presence to further support your teammates by slowing down the damage they receive and making it easier to escape or chase down enemy heroes. It’s also a potent harass tool in the laning phase, particularly against melee heroes, allowing you to be close enough to nuke with your heal and land auto attacks.

Guardian Angel is one of the best teamfight ultimates in the game, and can make it very difficult for a physical damage-oriented team to do anything, since both auto attacks and physical abilities are useless for 6-8 seconds. The key thing is to time it correctly, when the enemy team is engaged and can’t easily pull back.

Skill Build

Omniknight is a reactionary hero, meaning that you have multiple options on how to level your skills depending on the particular situation. This means you can open with either your heal, Repel, or Degen Aura at level 1. The only certainly is that you want to max your heal first, since it’s the only ability you have that doesn’t scale. The standard build is thus:

Omniknight 6.86 build. Source: Dota 2 hero builds.

Although heal is the standard option at level 1, you can get away with getting Degen Aura first, usually when you’re up against melee heroes or think you can secure a kill at the rune. This will allow you to harass or even get a kill early on. You can also get 1 level of Repel first, if you’re up against heroes with multiple magic disables.

There are 2 major variations to this build after the early game. The first is whether to max Repel or Degen Aura first, which depends entirely on how much you need repel and the kind of team you’re up against. For example, if your team decides to push early, maxing Repel is the better option. Otherwise, maxing Degen first would be better. Also, you can choose to delay picking up your ultimate until level 10 if you find that you simply don’t need it.

Position & Role

Although Omniknight has traditionally been played as a tri or dual lane support in the safe lane, he is now much more popular as an offlaner. And thanks to your high survivability and damage nuke, you can both stay alive well and possibly get a few kills. In terms of role, Omni is best played as a pure support.

Items

Starting Items

There are two ways to build Omniknight early on – the Soul Ring build, and the standard build. For the Soul option, you simply pick up the Soul Ring recipe and a Ring of Regen, along with a ward. Then once you have 325 gold, you can finish the ring at the side shop.

With Soul Ring, you can easily spam heal yourself to stay alive and get farm, and never have to go back to base to heal. Meanwhile for the standard build, you pick up:

4 tangos

1 healing salve

Stout shield

1 Mango OR Observer ward (could also ask from teammates)

1 Clarity

Personally I prefer to Soul Ring option, just because it’s so incredibly good on Omniknight. However, some players prefer to skip it, just because once you get Arcane boots you will never need mana again.

Early Game

As with most heroes, your first early game item should be boots. If you went Soul Ring, you can finish the ring by buying a Sage’s Mask at the sideshop.

Core Items

Arcane Boots

Omniknight is always starved for mana because of how good his heal is, so arcane boots are a must. Plus they are very helpful for your teammates as well.

Mekansm

An AOE heal to go along with your single-target heal, and your AOE mana restore from arcane boots. Plus you can later combine the two into Guardian Greaves.

Guardian Greaves

Once you have enough gold, you should definitely combine your arcane boots and Mek into Guardian Greaves, arguably the best support item in the game.

Luxury/Situational Items

Once you’ve built your core, you should decide whether you want more items to help your teammates, or items to help you survive or even deal damage, all depending on what seems to be the best option for your particular match.

Force Staff

Force Staff has a billion uses from saving yourself and your teammates, to putting enemy heroes in a bad position. This is a great utility item to go along with your spells.

Linken’s Sphere

Linken’s is a good pick up against a team that tries to stun, silence, and nuke you before you can use your powerful team fight abilities. It also helps protect you from your biggest weakness – Diffusal Blade, which can dispel both your Repel and Guardian Angel.

Shiva’s Guard

Shiva’s works really well with your hero because you should typically be right in the center of the team fight, giving your team an additional slow and damage. It also helps survive against physical-damage heroes thanks to the armor.

Necronomicon

Necro is a decent option if your team is lacking damage, and also if you’re up against invisible heroes.

Radiance

If your team is completely steamrolling the enemy and you have tons of gold, you could build a Radiance. Thanks to all your support skills, you can survive for a long time to make good use of the AOE magic damage.

Warding

Warding is a big part of a successful offlane, both because you want good vision to see if the enemy heroes are trying to gank you, and to prevent them from pulling the neutral camps. As soon as you’ve bought your items, head down your suicide lane and place an observer ward to block either the hard or easy camp, in such a way that also provides vision.

Here are some examples of good offlane ward spots (Green Jungle wards):

Useful offlaner wardspots.

Gameplay

After you’ve warded, you should either contest the rune with your teammates, or go back to your lane to block creeps. Blocking is always useful since it keeps the creep wave closer to your tower, which protects you from ganks and makes it easier to farm. Ideally, you want to let the ranged creep get out in front because it dies faster.

As for the actual laning phase, your job is to survive and try to get as much experience and farm as possible. Use your heal to keep yourself alive, but always try to hit an enemy hero with it as well. Once you get your Arcane Boots, it’s going to be much easier to harass enemy heroes with your heal and get last hits.

At this point, around level 5 and on, you have two options: continue farming until you get your Mekansm, or start rotating to help other lanes and to put down wards. If the lane is going really well, you can even push the creep wave to try and take out the enemy tower. Be sure to teleport if your teammates are getting dived.

Once you’ve secured your Mek, you can start grouping up with your teammates to push towers and force teamfights. Omniknight is arguably the best teamfight hero in the game, so you want to take advantage of that as soon as possible. Be sure to focus Repel and heals on your carry, unless someone else is about to die. From here on, your job is to ward, counter ward, and keep your teammates alive in fights.

Tips & Tricks

Don’t forget that you can repel and heal yourelf as well, especially if it means being able to get your ult off in a team fight before dying

In some cases, it may even be alright to Ult just yourself, if you think it will buy your teammates time to clean up

Always try to use your heal in a way that will damage enemy heroes – healing melee carries is the best way to ensure this

If one of your carries picks up a BKB, make sure to start Repeling someone else until they use it

To sum things up, here’s a gameplay video of PPD, one of the best support players in the world, playing Omniknight in the offlane. This video shows a lot of the information covered above:

Conclusion

If you want to raise your MMR quickly and easily, there’s no safer way than playing Omniknight. And given how much people hate picking support, you will also save yourself the trouble of automatically losing the game at the picking stage because everyone picked a carry.